ATLANTA – An ad hoc committee of Georgia House lawmakers is recommending smaller class sizes, higher teacher pay, and more money for operating and capital costs to beef up the state’s pre-kindergarten program.
With few changes in state support to the lottery-funded program since its inception 30 years ago, pre-kindergarten enrollment in Georgia has fallen from a high of 82,868 students in 2012 to 73,462.
A report released by the House Working Group on Early Childhood Education Tuesday blames the decline on an inability to find teachers willing to work at state-funded salaries and inadequate state funding for opening and operating classrooms.
“We know when our children start fast in school, educational outcomes are improved dramatically,” said House Speaker Jon Burns, R-Newington, who formed the ad hoc committee last spring. “One of the best predictors of educational success is having a strong pre-kindergarten program.”
“This is very much a workforce development issue,” added Speaker Pro Tempore Jan Jones, R-Milton, who chaired the committee. “The more children have access to pre-k, the more parents can reenter the workforce.”
The committee is recommending reducing the average pre-kindergarten class size from 22 – a move the state made during the budget crunch the Great Recession brought on more than decade ago – to 20.
The report also proposed raising the salaries of assistant teachers in the pre-k program from $20,190 per year to $25,700, which would align their pay with K-12 paraprofessionals, and increasing pay for lead pre-k teachers to the state’s salary schedule for K-12 public school teachers.
“There’s no substitute for equalizing salaries, to recognize the great important work these folks are doing,” Burns said.
The committee also is recommending updating the pre-k formula for operations from the current $8,000 per pre-k classroom per year, which has not been changed since 2004, to $30,000. Both public schools and private pre-k providers for the first time would get state funding for construction of pre-k classrooms.
The various recommendations in the report would cost just more than $100 million per year, funds that would come from the Georgia Lottery Corp.’s healthy budget reserves.
Jones said the goal is to put the state in a position to offer pre-k to every parent in Georgia who wants to enroll their 4-year-olds in either a public or private pre-k program.
The percentage of children enrolled in pre-k varies widely across the state. Some counties have waiting lists as high as 339, with 2,714 youngsters statewide on a waiting list. Statewide, only 53% of eligible children are enrolled in pre-k.
“I’m hopeful we will see a more robust offering of public pre-k,” Jones said. “I’m confident we can change what has been happening over the last few years.”